Player, Attack Thyself - Why Japanese gamers love avenging Pearl Harbor. By Clive Thompson: "This leads to a surprising facet of game psychology: Really hard-core gamers often look past the cultural 'content' of a game. They're mostly worried about a more prosaic concern, which is whether the game is fun. The geopolitics of a game melt away as players, like philosophers musing on their favorite platonic solid, ponder gameplay in the abstract.

We're accustomed to thinking that a piece of entertainment is nothing but its cultural content. A movie or TV show is just what you see on the screen. But a game is also about play, and play is invisible. That's why outsiders are often puzzled by the success of games that would appear to be nothing but screamingly offensive content. They can't see the play. Sure, you've got raw guts flying around�but for the player, part of the joy is in messing with physics (even if that happens to be bullets and shoulder-launched grenades) or with strategy (even if that's figuring out how to starve a village)."

Computers & Writing 2001: "First, that 'except special technical commuications support' thing is a HUGE except, and really, it's the only thing I've *ever* really used computer labs for. I would agree, the need to have 25 or so students meet three times a week in a computer lab so they can MOO each other is kinda over, and in my experience, classes that are assigned in computer labs for every meeting (even my own classes) rarely make use of the computers every day. But I also think that a few labs (including laptop labs) can go a long, long way in terms of training students certain skills (my teaching folks to make web pages, plus it's a hell of a lot easier to teach fy comp students how to critically evaluate their web research or how to work the library's computer set-up in a lab than it is over something like WebCT), to collaborate, to do peer review, to provide some higher-end functions (things like PageMaker or hardware things like CD Burners), and so forth. Anyone who says we don't need labs to do these things has never had the discomfort of having no access to a lab.

But I would agree with Fred that the solution of putting in more labs to 'get them on the Internet' is not much of a solution either. I think we still need campus supported labs, but I think we need them for different functions than we did even five years ago. I doubt computer services people do this, but it would be interesting to survey students at a place like EMU or wherever and try to figure out how students use the big university supported labs we have. I'll bet 5 years ago, 50% of the students in there were doing word processing. Now I'll bet that number is like 25% or less, with the rest of the students doing things like browsing the web, checking their email (the campus labs still have a lot quicker connection than home), *printing* papers, etc."

lewin: "Additionally, Lewin strongly emphasised the complementarity of basic and applied research.

Famous for the saying:

'There is Nothing So Practical as a Good Theory'

'If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.'


The power of Lewin's theorizing lay not in a formal propositional kind of theory but in his ability to build 'models' of processes that drew attention to the right kinds of variables that needed to be conceptualized"

Lewin, Kurt (1951): " Such a goal also guides my future as a communication scholar. It is too bad Kurt Lewin died so unexpectedly (of a reported heart attack in 1947), he could have taken the communication discipline even further. His famous quote, 'There is nothing so practical as a good theory,' remains my credo."

Rebecca Howard on Grammar

Chapter 3: Critical Ethnography: Method and Methodology: "This challenged me to ensure that any research methodology and method that I adopted would potentially raise the political consciousness of the participants, including myself. As well as this I hoped that it would also offer the YCW the possibility of developing emancipatory social action. It was also clear that I had to be honest with the YCW about my intentions and to show that my research methodology was consistent with the role of collaborator and the philosophy of the YCW. It was necessary to show the YCW that my research methodology was grounded in the belief that my reflection did 'not begin with a search for answers but with a search for questions' (Freire, 1972, cited in Street 1992:15). The YCW agreed to my research as it offered them the possibility of drawing on the critical report that would result from the project."

Visual Rhetoric Projects: "John Wittman--'Ethnography Project'


What I want to do for this project is look at the details of ethnographic use in composition and education. My specific intentions, however, keep slipping between two points. Initially I wanted to focus primarily on the role objects and the relationships between objects play a part in the construction of ethnographies. The more I read the more I am inclined to focus my attentions on the difficulties of interpretation, i.e. discuss the difficulties of looking at unfamiliar cultural settings rhetorically. At this point I think I will have to include both to some extent. I want to begin with issues of postcolonialism since ethnography's primary purpose in Europe was to learn about cultural groups in order to colonize their land, enslave them, and/or subjugate them in some way. I'm not quite sure what I am looking for here, but I think I need to explore some foundational problems with ethnography's origins. From here I think I need to make some generalizations about how ethnography has developed and been employed over the last few decades. The bulk of the essay will analyze problems with vision. Two things come to mind here. (1) Covino's claim that no vision can see everything and nothing can alter that, and (2) Barry's claims that our vision is premapped for us by our social/cultural environment and even our genetics. Since ethnography is dealing with the unfamiliar, I need to address issues that discuss how our interpretation of cultures different from our own are always 'colored' by our own pasts. How I plan to resolve these issues, ultimately, is using Geertz's idea of thick description, which I am going to try to relate to Barry's point of gestalt theory, and to propose consciousness on the writers part about how they are coloring texts. I hope to extend current theories of triangulation in vision. The goal is to promote ethnography by working through its shortcomings. Despite its shortcomings, it's one of the only ways we have to understand cultural dynamics to the extent that we can incorporate those into real classroom settings. This is of fundamental importance in post open-admission education.

"

The Harbinger. Web-Based Education: Barreling Down the Tracks on the Online Gravy Express.

University Business: Viewpoint

Digital Culture - Paul LeBlanc: "I have watched too many companies with specialists -- good graphics people, good technical people, high-quality content providers -- unable to effectively develop an Internet strategy because there was no one person who knew enough about all those areas and what it means to have such a strategy. We're training those people.

Your program for educators stresses the development of 'pedagogically sound' applications of the Internet and other new media technologies. Given the radical re-evaluation that the new tools demand, how do you know valid pedagogy when you see it?

Good question. It depends a lot on whom you ask. Accrediting agencies say 'Have more and better outcome assessment.' Some school boards rely on tradition: 'Do more of what you used to do when I was a kid!' The testing industry says, 'Use our tests.' My own feeling is that schools need to develop a set of philosophical guidelines that make sense for their context and community. There is no one definition of good learning or good teaching for every school. We too often ignore the road children travel in our incessant worry about where they end up.
"

Digital Culture - Paul LeBlanc: "Let me begin with the similarities of the two worlds: business and K-12. Small- and medium-sized businesses and schools are still early on in their integration of Internet technologies. Only 25 percent of medium-sized businesses (100 to 1000 employees) and 8 percent of small businesses (fewer than 100 employees) have access to the Net. About 65 percent of schools have a connection, but only about 15 percent of classrooms do. In both cases the task of strategizing, implementing, and more often, evangelizing, is left up to individuals. We want to train those individuals, to position them, really, to effectively and successfully lead the efforts of their organizations. More fundamentally, both programs are predicated on the notion that getting connected can dramatically change how and what one does within an organization, whether it's selling, marketing, and customer support in a business environment or curriculum, assessment, and research in a learning environment. Both programs begin with the question: 'What happens when I get connected?' "

My son, who is seven, and has lived most of his life in Kentucky, took an icicle to the bus stop because it was cool. A neighbor told him to drop it or he would "break it over his head." Then he yelled at my wife over the phone for letting our son bring a "weapon to school, and told her she had better take him seriously or he would "take it to the next level."



Sigh.



It's people like this that make tranquilizer guns filled with liquid prozac seem like a really good idea.

datacloud

In class Friday we'll be working on your project #2 redesign assignment. Please come prepared.

In their presentation, "Researching Digital Literacies: The
Methodological Challenges of Life History, Collaboration,
and Autobiography," Hawisher and Selfe will focus upon the
collaborative methodology they have developed and the
ethical issues they have faced during the past six years
spent researching technological literacy in America from
1978-2003.


In her presentation "Qualitative Research on the Internet:
Considerations for the Ethnographic Surfer," Mountford will
focus on the practical and theoretical issues that arise
when conducting qualitative research through the Internet.
She will examine two kinds of special problems:
safeguarding the privacy of participants whom one studies,
and determining when data posted on the Internet is public
or private.


The rest of the workshop will be organized as a research
roundtable in which researchers will present work-in-
progress for feedback. Veteran researchers will be on hand
to facilitate roundtable discussions. The goal of this
annual workshop is to offer mentoring and support to
qualitative researchers at all levels of experience.


Presenters may focus on specific concerns and/or broader
issues related to qualitative research and we encourage
submissions from those at any stage of the research
process. Each presenter will have twenty minutes for both
presentation and feedback, which will necessitate
presenters to have on hand concise and accessible summaries
of their studies.